3 GOP Presidential Hopefuls Home-School Iowa Voters

Three GOP presidential hopeful courted evangelicals in Iowa Wednesday, voicing strong support for home schooling, CNN reported Thursday. U.S. Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Ron Paul of Texas joined Herman Cain, a businessman in addressing the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators. The Christian group advocates curtailing government interference in parents decisions to educate their children at home.

Bachmann played up her Iowa roots and experience home schooling her own children, according to CNN.

"I'm a seventh-generation Iowan . . . What I love about Iowans is that we're fighters," Bachmann told the crowd.

"My husband and I also home-schooled our children for a number of years," Bachmann said, mentioning her five biological children and 23 others she parented through foster care.

Home schooling is "about freedom," Bachmann said. "It's about liberty. It's about knowing our children better than the state knows our children."

Cain, who was the first Republican to establish a presidential exploratory committee, criticized big government. "Get this government out of the way," he told the crowd. "Government is trying to strangle education in America by strangling what you have the right to do."

Paul called public schools a “propaganda machine” that conditions children “to believe in so much that is totally un-American.”